I don't know about you but I had this prevailing thought that if I just juggled everything right, I could do it all.
I could do my job and run a side business. I could eat delicious garbage and maintain a six-pack. I could hang with my friends, find a spicy girlfriend, and make time for my family. But that's not all - if I act now, I could keep a dish-free kitchen sink, finish some no-stress taxes, and empty my Netflix queue! I could be The One to achieve work-life balance - the Neo of Productivity.
But I'm starting to think I can't. Neither can you. And that's kind of the big idea.
Oliver Burkeman's latest book, 4,000 Weeks - Time Management for Mortals, offers the alternative - surrender.
If you're lucky in this life, you get an absurdly short 4,000 weeks (or 80 years). Subconsciously, you know this as well as I do, and that's why we're rushing around to get everything done. But Burkeman argues, "The problem isn’t exactly that these techniques and products don’t work. It’s that they do work - in the sense that you’ll get more done, race to more meetings, ferry your kids to more after-school activities, generate more profit for your employer - and yet, paradoxically, you only feel busier, more anxious, and somehow emptier as a result."
And even if we could spin all the plates perfectly, the saying goes, "If you want to make God laugh, make a plan."
Getting everything done feels like a noble effort. We're trying to avoid the need to make a decision. Basically, why do one thing when I can do them all!?
Burkeman writes: "We push ourselves harder, chasing fantasies of the perfect work-life balance; or we implement time management systems that promise to make time for everything, so that tough choices won’t be required. Or we procrastinate, which is another means of maintaining the feeling of omnipotent control over life - because you needn’t risk the upsetting experience of failing at an intimidating project, obviously, if you never even start it. We gill our minds with busyness and distraction to numb ourselves emotionally. (“We labour at our daily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than is necessary to sustain our life," wrote Nietzsche, “because to us it is even more necessary not to have leisure to stop and think. Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.”) Or we plan compulsively, because the alternative is to confront how little control over the future we really have."
While the inevitability of oblivion makes you feel like you need to squeeze every bit of juice out of every second, trying to do so only takes you out of it. If you spend every present moment worrying and planning the future, were you ever really here?
So what do we do after we surrender?
Be here now. Accept that you can only do so much. And then go do it.
Oh, and read Oliver Burkeman's book. My little email could never capture the entire brilliance of his work.